Hubble Space Telescope Celebrates 30 Years Since Launch

Hubble Space Telescope is set to celebrate 30 years in orbit this month. The event has driven NASA to post a fun feature on its website that enables everyone to see what the spacecraft was doing on their birthday.

“Hubble explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” NASA said in a message posted along the feature. “That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday.”

To use the feature, type in your birth day and month, and click on the ‘Submit’ button in order to see what the famed telescope captured on that day. Irrelevant of your birth date, you’re going to end up seeing something truly spectacular. After all, the Hubble Space Telescope is always monitoring deep space, collecting impressive intergalactic panoramas that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

The Most Productive Scientific Instrument So Far

The Hubble Space Telescope was sent to space in 1990 and has become one of NASA’s oldest and most important space observatory, capturing numerous planets,stars, and galaxies in a consistent manner ever since its launch.

As per NASA, “Hubble has seen stars being born. Hubble has seen stars die. It has seen galaxies that are trillions of miles away. Hubble also has seen comet pieces crash into the gases above Jupiter.”

The spacecraft weights 24,500 (11,113 kilograms) and gets its energy from the Sun using two 25-foot (7.6-meter) solar panels. It rotates around Earth at a distance of approximately 240 miles (547 kilometers) at a speed of about 17,000 mph (27,358 kph).

Utilizing the information collected by the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have shared more than 13,000 journal articles, making the spacecraft one of the most productive instruments ever created. Not long ago, Hubble researchers revealed the fact that the telescope found the first evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole.

The space agency had some celebrations planned for the telescope’s 30th anniversary but the pandemic has obliged NASA to delay them. However, space enthusiasts can still check out Hubble updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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